The smart mobile communication devices which can be used in this invention include the following three types: smart phones, a combination of a mobile phone having calling and text messaging capabilities and a tablet PC with the internet capabilities, a tablet PC with internet and phone capabilities. The mobile communications network used in the invention comprises a mobile internet. The mobile internet combines mobile communication with internet. The mobile internet has been through four generations, 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G, while 4G is the current generation. The mobile internet standard includes GSM, CDMA, GPRS, CDMA2000, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE, LTE, and Wi-Fi technology. The Wi-Fi, commonly known as wireless broadband, is a short range wireless transmission technology which helps users to access emails, websites, and the streaming media.
“Voting” means to collect information from the targeted crowd. In general, a formal, secured and creditable voting method has the following important features: secretiveness, completeness, truthfulness, uniqueness, legitimacy and verifiability. Secretiveness means that the voting contents are not made known to anyone except to the voter and assigned personnel (such as persons who count the votes). Completeness means that all valid votes are correctly counted. Truthfulness means that the vote truly reflects the voter's intent and cannot be altered by others. Uniqueness means that each vote is counted only once and no voter is allowed to cast more than one vote for the same voting matter. Legitimacy means that only a legitimate voter can participate in the voting. Verifiability means that the voter is able to verify whether the voter's vote is counted.
No matter whether the voting is a non-secret voting or secret voting, usually the voting takes place one site by paper, a voting device provided by the voting organization, or a special voting device or similar equipment. Although the on-site voting site may meet the uniqueness, legitimacy and other requirements, it is limited by the voting location and time; the voter has to go to the specific site assigned by the voting affair management organization at a given time to case the vote. Furthermore, the voting affair management organization has to assign employees to manage the voting. This is inconvenient and inefficient for voting and vote counting. It is impossible for the voters to cast votes or the voting employee to operate the voting remotely.
To solve the above problem, an electronic voting method based on internet has been used. This method overcomes the geographical limitation of the paper voting. However, the method cannot ensure voting uniqueness, secretiveness, and truthfulness and thus it is difficult to be implemented. For example, in order to meet the security requirement of the secret electronic voting, the information technology providers developed blind signature and ring signature strategies, homo-morphic encryption, hybrid network, zero-knowledge proof protocol, secured multiparty calculation, secret sharing and threshold cryptography, FOO protocol, and the its improved protocol. The FOO protocol is relatively commonly used. It is an electronic voting protocol suitable for large scale voting and is an electronic voting system based on an anonymous channel. It uses the Bit Commitment, blind signature and similar technologies and it relatively well resolved the issue of the anonymity requirement. However, the FOO protocol does not allow voters to abstain from voting. Furthermore, when two votes collide, i.e., the votes by two legitimate voters are identical, they may be mistakenly considered as a double voting. The FOO protocol strictly requires the voter to submit an encrypted key on time; otherwise, the voting contents will be released early or cannot be decrypted during the counting of the votes. None of the above protocol can ensure the security of the electronic secret voting. For electronic secret voting, its main focus is on the completeness and truthfulness of the voting contents, i.e., the voting contents by the voter reflect the voter's true intent and are not altered by anyone else. Currently, there is no electronic voting method which ensures this security. For the non-secret voting, the general requirements for the uniqueness, truthfulness, and security are greater because the voter's information is shown on the voting ticket. The method of internet electronic voting does not meet all these requirements. The use of internet for electronic voting method often cannot satisfy the above general requirements. Security is one of the most important features of a voting system; it ensures the fairness and justice. For the governmental or internal enterprise voting or voting for an important candidate, the requirement for security of the voting process and voting contents is even more important. The current voting methods cannot meet the security requirement. Furthermore, no matter whether the voting is a secret voting or non-secret voting, the internet-based electronic voting methods use desktop and laptop computers in order for the voting affair management organization to log into. They are not suitable for the voters who have no fixed working sites and cannot meet the need of the modern society for fast and convenient voting systems.